Previewing merge results

So we have our letter here, complete with merge fields and a data source, but…it's not quite time to merge.…First, we are going to use Word's Preview Results feature to see how a sample of…the individual letters will look if we complete the merge.…And normally, if Preview Results is turned off, what we see are the highlighted…merge fields, and we have three of them here in our letter.…When we click Preview Results, we see whatever the current record is, reflected…here in the Merge Fields.…So there is record 5.…We can click the first record button to go to record 1, the last record button…to go to record 79, and we can use these to work our way through and check out,…visually, all of the different records.…

Ideally, we'd like to look at groups of records that are different.…For example, in our data source, the biggest difference between records is that…we have some that do have a company name and some that don't.…So we would like to make sure that that address block manages that.…We also have a few records that have no first name in it.…

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Author

Released

9/10/2010

In Word 2010: Mail Merge in Depth, author Gini Courter demonstrates how to take advantage of Word's Mail Merge feature to save a tremendous amount of time creating customized documents. The course offers tutorials on creating letters, emails, envelopes, and labels. It also shows how to use Mail Merge with Outlook and Excel, creating data sources, inserting fields, using IF and other rules for customized merges, and troubleshooting Mail Merge issues. Exercise files are included with the course.